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Kids Low Impact Paintball

Hello, all.

I was discussing with a field owner whose field is about a 1 hour drive west of me 50 calibre play for young kids. JT Splatmaster and Valken Gotcha specifically.

One field in the region is doing good business with JT Splatmaster hosting parties for 9, 10 and 11 year olds. A field in Quebec whose ownership is friends with the above mentioned field owner is doing well offering JT Splatmaster games.

I would like more feedback though. Does anyone here either run a field offering games for young players using these types of markers or just happen to know how field owners in your area feel about the products/concept?

I do know that the gear isn't amazing and the springs are pretty difficult for the kiddies to ratchet back. The paint breaks in storage if you so much as look at it funny - to the extent that the field I'm near which used it was leaving bags open for a few hours just to make it a bit less brittle.

Great concept though, seems to work.

The biggest problem with kids paintball is that the masks practically fall down around their ankles and the average field wont want to have a separate fleet of kid size splatmaster goggles.

Going from regular paintball to 50 cal is nothing to how it feels. For young children coming into it, it is well worth it to get their feet wet into paintball without the possibility of getting hurt, scared of regular paintball.

There are 2 different kinds of paint, the regular and the low impact. The low impact, does break easily. I have no experience with the regular 50cal paint.

No don't expect the paint to fly true at great distances. Just getting the kids feet wet with the game is great. As they get more into it, then they can graduate to real paintball.

We run bolt 50 cal markers and Valken Gotcha guns. We did away with Splatmaster. The spring feed only holding 17 shots or so, the kids lose interest pretty quick when the are constantly running out of paint. Gotcha has taken their place.

Both type of 50 cal have been fantastic for us. We have way more rebookings and kids that can't wait to have their birthday after playing these formats. If you have ever tried running a party of 68 cal with kids in the 10-12 year old area. You know there is going to be at least one kid that takes a bad shot and you would think he got shot by a deer slug. Rolling around screaming and crying and saying he is never going to play paintball again. At the same time scaring the hell out of the rest of the kids. None of that with the 50 cal.

We switched to 50cal Emeks and Tippman Ft12s for our private parties - it's been a huge benefit, getting a lot more people to come out and try it, and more return players for parties and whatnot since they don't go home all welted up as much anymore. We still do the JT guns for kids under 9, but find we are alwasy fixing broken cocking handles and a lot of the kids in the 9-10 range have a lot more fun wiht the normal 50cal play.

Last time I played 50 caliber (a teammate had a birthday game for one of his kids), we chrono'd to 280. Paint bounced a lot if you didn't hit something hard. We adults called ourselves out on bounces if the kids hit us.

That's an issue in the US - you're stuck at 300 because of insurance stuff. Elsewhere - here, Europe, etc., we can shoot 50 cal at about 350. Reason being it still doesn't really hurt (I think you have to get to 470 to match the impact energy of 68, subtract whatever pain factor you like to compensate for smaller impact area), but does break consistently.

I'm actually not convinced that 50 cal rental players should feel the need to move to 68 as they gain experience. If I were starting a field today I'd seriously consider going 50 cal exclusive, and even run airball or competition events in 50 cal. Completely ignore the existing paintball players who shoot 68 and build things from the ground up. I feel like paintball needs a reset, and the range disadvantage of 50 is well offset by the reduced impact.

Then again, if I were building a paintball operation from scratch today... I wouldn't build a paintball operation. Zero Latency or VRcade etc. have better mid/long term competitive potential as sports, better margins, better everything, and (soon thanks to MS getting involved) almost zero infrastructure requirements.

The Void is another VR experience - not sure if they are using a platform like Zero Latency and VRcade, but I do know they are getting Disney content like Wreck It Ralf and Star Wars for their games. The biggest complaint I hear about VR is shortness of the games and cost of entry. Paintball still has a leg up in that you can play all day for basically one entry fee (if you don't get by-the-drink charged on air and don't go back for paint frequently).